March 2018

Aug 18, 2010

Steve Allen (3:38:30) does not strike me as a guy who takes lightly the issue of inappropriate content, or any other problems at the library.

Rakestraw (3:46:10): "We want our children protected. I think everybody in this room wants it. There's not anybody who's going to disagree with that...Having been involved with the library as a former county commissioner and as a city councilperson, I think that you [board and staff] will address the problem, I really do."

Also mentioned last night: sites like Facebook, as well as email, can be robust porn-transmission vectors. Yet these would remain available even under filters.

Comments

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I really don't want to believe that Mary Rakestraw made her decision in a relativistic fashion. But it became clear from the discussion last night that she is the council liaison to the libraries, and has preexisting relationships with Neerman and the library board by virtue of that role. My concern is that she might have allowed those relationships to becloud her judgment on this matter. I really regret her vote as a constituent.

After reading Killian's post, I was going to jokingly reply "It depends on whether you agree with the decision." But I refrained, figuring it would be unnecessarily snarky. It would seem that's actually the real answer though.

Anthony, there was actually ample reason presented last night to vote in favor of filters. All the council members, however, likely knew how they were going to vote before the meeting.

The reasons to do a filter were revealed with the comments made by speakers and also by council members. So if a council member unexpectedly makes the wrong vote and has a proximate relationship with certain interested parties, it raises questions as to whether judgment is affected.

I simply cannot get over the fact that all of this discussion and time spent on this issue is due to Danny Thompson "grandstanding". Can't these people see there is no issue to discuss and Danny had no reason to even bring it up except to "grandstand"?

Unless he wasn't grandstanding...maybe we should go back and revisit what Danny actually said to see if all this discussion is warranted.

Joe, there's one other option you failed to mention: The possibility that your own judgment is suspect. If a person you expected to vote one way "unexpectedly" votes a different way after consulting other sources of information, maybe you are the one coming to the "wrong" conclusion.

Anthony, I do not think that I am coming to the wrong conclusion. I think adopting the pose of moral relativism is the wrong way to approach this.

Thomas, this is ideological for Ms. Neerman. She simply does not believe in restricting access to internet websites. She made that pretty clear last night. And Roch, she offered a proposal that included filters only because the council demanded it. It was clear she did not want to do so.

Joe, if this was moral relativism, the library advocate a totally hands-off approach - as in, don't police Internet usage at all. That's obviously not the case, since they throttle it and take action against offenders, and since incidents have gone down over time. Moral relativism would be saying it's ok to view porn at the library, and it's ok if kids see it - a position which hasn't been advocated by anyone.